Generally speaking, a social network is a social structure made up of a set of actors (such as individuals or organizations) and the dyadic ties between these actors. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network). In the context of the Internet and other networks, a social network may be viewed as a set of social relations that link people through a network. Exemplary social networks include, for example, the Facebook social network, Twitter, Google+ (also known as Google Circles), LinkedIn, as well as various information or photo sharing sites such as Flickr and Pinterest.
Analyzing and presenting data obtained across more than one of these social network may be difficult. Each social network may use its own proprietary format for the data they expose through their respective interfaces. A consumer of this data whose goal is to gain a holistic view of one or more user's data across multiple social networks must manually compare the data elements obtained from each social network. This process is cumbersome to say the least. As a result, there is a need to normalize data obtained from a plurality of social networks so analysis and presentation across multiple social networks may be made easier.
In addition, there is class of software known as internet safety software that includes parental control and reputation protection that typically gather information about a user's online activity—including activity on social networks. These types of safety software, however, do not have a way to assess aggregate risk to a user based on an analysis of data associated with the user from the Internet and/or one or more social networks. Aggregating risk could allow easier comprehension of risk to an online user.